Shirtless photo a joke says FBI agent in Petraeus scandal (+video)

Shirtless photo: 'A joke' says Frederick Humphries, the FBI agent contacted by Jill Kelley to stop harassing emails sent by the woman having an affair with Gen. David Petraeus. The shirtless photo shows Humpries posed between two shirtless target dummies.

The FBI agent who began the investigation that led David Petraeus to resign as CIA director said that a shirtless photo he sent to a woman at the center of the probe was a "tongue-in-cheek joke" sent to many friends, and was not meant to be sexual.

The Seattle Times reports: "The picture, which was sent to a reporter at The Seattle Times in 2010, was taken following a "hard workout" with the SWAT team at MacDill Air Force Base. He's posed between a pair of target dummies that have a remarkable likeness to the buff agent. The caption on the photo, which was sent from a personal email account, reads, "Which One's Fred?"

Indeed, among his friends and associates, Humphries was known to send dumb-joke emails in which the punch line was provided by opening an attached photo.

The photo was sent from a joint personal email account shared by Humphries' wife. Humphries said that, at one point, his supervisor posted the picture on an FBI bulletin board as a joke and that his wife, a teacher, has a framed copy."

Humphries, who has been identified in media reports on the scandal mainly as the "shirtless" FBI agent, was a "top-notch" operative, according to a prosecutor who worked with him on the "millennium bomber" case years ago.